Control
by not bitter just twisted
Summary: Moriarty, from childhood to death; a character study. Spoilers for season one and the end of season two. What makes a man into a monster? One-shot.


He is born James Adam Moriarty, to a fairly well-off and stable family. His mother is young and energetic, his father slightly older but no less sprightly. And they love him. He is their only son, and oh, how they love him. Some people might say that he is slightly spoiled, but he doesn't act it. As even a very young child he has that air to him which says that everybody should love him, and what's more, most people who meet him do. As a five year old he is inquisitive and lovably precocious, and quite able to manipulate people's love for him to get chocolate, or the new book he wanted. But he's never mean spirited, quite the contrary. He loves everyone at least as much as they love him.

When he looks back later he can't quite remember _when_ it changes, but he remembers why it changed as if it was engraved on his brain. His dad was walking home from work one day, doesn't check the road and a car hits him. He suffers massive trauma to his brain and passes away ten minutes later. Very sad, of course, but not really anyone's fault. But even at the age of nine or ten Jim can't help feel _angry_. Angry at his dad, at the driver, and at the sheer bloody _randomness _of life. It has no proper rules Jim can find, no order or reason, and the thought of it chafes like sandpaper.

His mother isn't quite the same after that. At first she tries to hide it from him. He goes to the laundry room to see her just standing there, eyes red and tears running down her cheeks.

'Mum?' He is frightened, and she knows.

'It's nothing dear. Mummy just has some hay fever, that's all.' It's probably the hiding that worries him, as he knows she should be upset. It's also probably the hiding of her grief that breaks her in the end, and she starts drinking. He insists on taking the bus to and from school, and when he gets back he can smell it on her breath. Once he knows it he can smell it everywhere, and it pervades the house like rot. He hates it; it represents the death of his father, and the deterioration of his life. It's around that time his other family members stop visiting, and then his mother's friends. Soon there's no-one in his life outside of school but his mother, and the ghost of decay that the alcohol summons.

One night he comes downstairs to see her on the sofa. She doesn't seem as if she's been drinking, but he knows she has. She's staring ahead of her, dry eyed and disturbingly expressionless. He wishes she would cry again, or yell, or anything besides that eerie look in her eye. He says her name, and for a moment she doesn't respond.

'It might not have been him.' He doesn't understand, but he says nothing. 'The road was on the way to your school. If you had been with him, you would have run on ahead. It would have been you who was hit.'

'Mum, what do you—'

'It might have been you!' She is standing up and facing him, her face purple. 'If it was you Henry would still be here! We could have other children, better children, and my Henry would still be with me!' She cuts off her words as she dissolves in floods of tears, falling onto the floor with a bump and mouthing words in hysterical sobbing. Jim stands there for a moment, and then slowly walks away.

He doesn't sleep that night. Instead he just sits there in the darkness, his hands balled into fists and his eyes staring at the ceiling. Maybe it's this point when something inside him snaps, when he loses all hope, all faith in the world. Perhaps it's not quite that sudden, but is instead the moment where he begins to slope downwards. Whatever it is, he is never the same boy from this point.

He comes down to breakfast next morning and his mother is crying again. This time she is apologising, blaming the drink and the stress, and he just nods and smiles, a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. His mother smiles back, but she knows as well as he does that there is something cruel in his smile, but like him she pretends it isn't there. And life goes on as normal, his mother quits drinking, and he continues to excel at school just as if he's a perfectly normal 12 year-old.

School is different now, to him at least. The teachers who'd seemed wise before seem petulant and ridiculous in their request for respect and pretended authority. Friends who he'd like and been amused by are stupid and small minded. So he stops caring. Stops listening to teachers, stops talking to his friends. He hates them all now, or at least he thinks so. This continues until one day his mother is called in, and his teacher have a 'discussion' with him, thinking it might help. Perhaps it does in a way, because from now on Jim starts to pretend. He never realised he was such a skilled actor, but now he decides that it's only this ability that stops them calling a child psychologist to prod at him.

Soon it becomes a game. He pretends to like one boy, and then once Jim wheedles his secrets out of him he abandons him and uses the secrets he knows to gain another child's confidence. Before long he has dirt on all the children he knows, and even some he doesn't know. After a while he begins to tire of this game, and starts taking money from other children to spread their 'enemy's' secrets. Everyone now knows him, even the older children in the year above. They're afraid of him, he knows, but this doesn't worry him. He enjoys the fear and the power notoriety gives him. As he ages the secrets become more serious, and everything he learns just reinforces his feelings about the darkness in the world. He decides that the darkness suites him.

It's around his fourteenth birthday that one of the boys in his year who's bigger and much less intelligent than him decides to beat the hell out of what he calls 'that smarmy dick'. Jim doesn't make a sound but endures the beating silently and without expression. The next day he uses some of his secrets to get a large gang of people to pay back the boy with interest, and when the boy is taken to hospital and the headmaster asks them for names, everyone is too afraid to come forward. Everyone knows who's behind it, of course.

Jim is now asked to take revenge for people, although not as often as he might like. Pretending to play the hero is wearisome, but the control he now has over the student body makes up for it. People are normally horrified when they find out just how badly he takes revenge, but it doesn't stop them. Even the teachers are weary of him, not knowing quite why but sensing something awful.

Jim has acquired a few lackeys by now. Even fairly young boys are attracted by power, and there are few who don't know the amount of it he has. One day one of them comes to him with a problem, something Jim finds bizarre.

'What is it?' He wouldn't normally be anything but icily polite, but Jones is an especially boring idiot, and even talking to him wearies Jim's normally inexhaustible spirit.

'That new boy... Carl Powers.' Jim pricks up his ears. He wasn't aware of any new boys around the place, and this has suddenly become interesting.

'What about him?'

'He keeps talking to people. Spreading rumours. About me, and some of the others. We don't like it.' Jim finds this amusing, but after a bit of contemplation he decides that it can't be allowed to continue. No-one else can be allowed to have any sort of power. However, at least this Carl Powers sounds slightly interesting. Maybe he'd speak with him before taking action.

Powers is by the canteen, smoking a cigarette with blatant disregard for any of the teachers who pass by, whom all pretend they don't notice.

'Powers?' The boy is bedraggled and sloppy, but in a stylish way which suggests the effect is deliberate. He's a rich boy if ever he's seen one, and Jim has acquired an ability to tell this sort of thing.

'What?' His voice is surprisingly effeminate, and Jim raises an eyebrow.

'I've heard you've been spreading rumours about some of my... associates. I'm requesting you stop.'

Powers nearly chokes on his cigarette. '_Associates?_ Who the fuck says that? You a fucking bender or something?'

Jim smiles icily. 'No, I'm not a 'fucking bender' as you so delightfully put it. But I'd like to say, if you don't do what I'll say I can make life difficult for you. Or even end it completely.'

Carl doesn't say anything. Instead he just laughs in his stupid high pitched laugh, and Jim immediately finds himself furious. He storms away, and within ten minutes he finds the anger has once again changed to coldness. He knows what he has to do; he knew this day would come eventually. Anyway, it could be fun. And he hasn't had _fun_ in a while.

He does nothing until the swimming pool trip. Just watches and learns. He learns that Powers enjoys swimming. That he always wears the same trainers. That he has eczema on his feet, and that he keeps the cream in the side of his bag. All of it he quietly catalogues in his mind and a plan formulates. He knows what to do, and what he needs.

Everyone's appalled when it happens, as of course they would be. A boy cut down in his prime, etc, etc. A solemn assembly is called, and they all pretend to be sad. No one of importance suspects foul play, and although some boy from the private school claims that he knows it's a murder, no-one believes him. After the assembly, Jones approaches him.

'Um... Jim? It wasn't you, was it? You didn't... you can't have...' the boy starts crying, big fat tears blobbing down his face. Predictable. Jim knows the boy thinks it's his fault for telling Jim about him, and it is. Jim finds it horribly irritating, so he just smiles and turns away.

'He laughed at me.' He says over his shoulder, and walks away.

No-one else knows, but some of them start to give him even more fearful looks than normal. They refer to him as Moriarty now, rather than Jim. They all avoid talking to him, afraid of what he might do. Jim wonders if he's insane, and then quietly accepts it. By now he's sixteen, and he's already killed a man. The thought doesn't bother him, and he wonders why trying to find order in an orderless universe makes him insane. He was just having fun, after all.

His mother barely talks to him now. She's afraid of him too, he knows that. She's stopped drinking and crying, but he can tell something's still not right. She dies less than six months after Carl Powers, and Jim is astounded to find himself upset. Maybe it's because he now has to find someplace to live, or maybe he genuinely misses the vague looks of horror that was virtually all their contact. Whatever the reason, Jim decides that he has to move out of the house. A distant aunt offers to let him move in, and after seeing how wealthy she is Jim readily agrees. She barely lasts more than a month before her 'accident'. Being her sole inheritor, Jim decides to continue to live in the house until his sixth form is over and then pay his own way through university.

He keeps a fairly low profile. He uses his grades to get into London Imperial and studies economics. He meets a few girls, who he enjoys for a while before quickly growing bored of and discarding. He gets a little bored in his second year and plays a fun game manipulating one of his teachers into having an affair with a student, both ruining his marriage and getting him fired, but after that he keeps quiet.

He eventually graduates with distinctions and a few friends who he casually acts normal around; he's come to believe that friends are important, and his acting ability becomes an even more important asset. After Uni he's almost burnt through his inheritance, so he has no choice but to get a job. He starts in accountancy and of course the job itself is horrifically boring, but Jim finds that accountants are wonderful. There's so many of them with _acidic_ little personalities, all of which are burning themselves out with the mindless tedium of it, and they're just so much _fun_ to play with. Jim gets by on both this game and has some fun changing numbers around, but after about a year he is so bored that he quits.

Jim has met people through his job, however. People with connections, people... if they're not _exactly_ criminals, they have definite knowledge and understanding of it. They introduce to other people, and before he knows it he is completely embroiled in the criminal world. And he _loves_ it. More than that, he excels at. It is rarely boring, and in less than two years he finds himself one of the leading criminal bosses in England.

But of course, it isn't enough.

He doesn't have enough control. He can still feel the inconsistencies, the parts of the world he can't control, and it irritates him like a mosquito. So he expands his criminal empire; Japan, Afghanistan, China. He has a foothold in almost every country, every enterprise that goes on _he _knows about. Soon he begins to find enjoyment in messing with the world he now has virtual control over; he disgraces a wealthy Japanese businessman and sends the stock market significantly down. He sends opium traders disguised as terrorists through Afghanistan, causing a major skirmish that he hears kills four British soldiers and send two more out of action, one with massive wounds to the shoulder. He feels no guilt, only a temporarily alleviation of the boredom.

It's around this time that he discovers Sherlock Holmes. He's browsing the strange side of the internet looking for possible ventures when he comes across his website. Although sceptical, Jim is intrigued by what Holmes claims to be able to accomplish, and orders surveillance on him. He spends time researching his background, and is further interested by the connection between him and Mycroft Holmes. Oh yes, Jim knows Mycroft- it was hard not to, when he had such a lot of plants in the British government. None as important as Mycroft, of course; the man was bizarrely powerful, not that the public even knew his name.

Jim starts setting a few operations in play around the area Sherlock lives. He knows enough now to be aware that the police often ask him for help, and he isn't disappointed. Soon after the first project goes ahead, Sherlock is on the case and it is such a joy to watch him go. Jim stops paying as much attention to his other business enterprises and begins concentrating wholeheartedly on his new toy. And Sherlock is as good as he'd hoped. He solves the case, and then goes on to become well known due to the efforts of his new companion. Jim finds that Sherlock even knows his own name, and for the first time realises that he enjoys having lost this first game, simply because it allowed for another round.

The second round is as fun as the first, except that this time there is more pawns to push around the board. Jim enjoys the poetry of the Chinese gangs, although finding them too sentimental, and it seems a fitting way to end his short acquaintance with Holmes. But Holmes beats him again.

Jim is astonished. This has never happened to him before. He is equally astonished to learn that Sherlock was the boy who suspected the Carl Powers murder. This seems too good an opportunity to pass up and he devises a game that they can play together. Firstly though, he feels the urge to meet face to face with Holmes, albeit in disguise. He finds a girl at the morgue through a blog post and it is easy to befriend her and then entice her into allowing him to meet the man. He finds her vapid and silly, but a willing little mouse and she is obviously very much in love with the great Sherlock Holmes

Jim enjoys their meeting; slipping his phone number under a Petri dish and camping himself up as much as possible. He wonders for a moment if Holmes will notice the act, and is disappointed when he doesn't. Still, he's met him now. At the same time as this he's been sending test after test, each with a person's life as a price. He wasn't entirely sure if that would faze Holmes as he doesn't seem the sort, but it definitely shocks his little flatmate which in turn upsets Holmes.

Holmes does as well at the game as could have been expected, and Jim's almost disappointed when he realises that Holmes has to die. He's fun, but if he jeopardises any of Jim's projects than Jim would be most displeased. He finds it amusing when Holmes comes into the pool in his big coat, looking dramatic and debonair. This makes it even more fun to shove John Watson out of the door, if only to watch Sherlock's facade crumble slightly to give way to betrayal and then despair. But it can't all be fun and games, so Jim tells him all about the game they've been playing. He's surprised by how quickly Holmes is ready to give up the plans, and wonders about the exact nature of his and Watson's relationship. He dismisses the thought, and enjoys Sherlock's expression as he tosses the plans into the pool. It's a dramatic toss, and Jim feels he deserves an award for sheer style.

The conversation is interrupted several times, and Jim decides in the heat of the moment to let them live to play with in the future. He's barely gone five yards before he recollects himself and remembers why they have to be killed. They don't seem exactly thrilled when he re-enters the pool, but it feels like a last sweet enjoyment to Jim.

They're having a Mexican stand off when his mobile rings. After taking the call he decides that perhaps it might be worth letting them live after all, and lets them go. He surprised how happy the decision makes him.

It's entertaining watching Adler play them for idiots, but he can't help feeling a twinge of jealousy. That Adler can beat the man whom he as yet hasn't gotten close to properly beating merely because she has breasts is annoying and he is overwhelmingly happy when Sherlock wins. Sherlock is now occupying most of his thoughts, and he wonders if this is what being in love feels like. This seems oddly exciting, but then he remembers that people in love often don't spend their time trying to destroy their loved one.

It is while he is distracted that Mycroft catches him. This isn't worrying to him; on the contrary, it's just what he needs to gain the power for his final game. Mycroft is afraid of him, that he is certain. This is oddly worrying, and he wonders what he has become which make men older and stronger than him scared before reminding himself of what he is. Mycroft gives him what he needs and is forced to release him, and Moriarty opens up one of the fake personalities he has made for himself. It is time.

Sherlock is well known now. It is impossible to find anyone who doesn't know his name, or associate him with that god awful hat. This works to Jim's advantage.

It is almost painfully easy to break into the most high security places in Britain. Jim realises that perhaps this game with Sherlock _would_ be final- there is no-one else who can match Jim, and Jim will be very lonely and bored when Sherlock was gone. Of course, he could attempt to find a new playmate, but it wouldn't be the same. Everything had become too easy.

It is also too easy to get his charges relinquished. Whoever came up with the idea of juries were excessively foolish, although Jim supposes that the reason they didn't understand what was wrong with it was because he was the first one to be able to manipulate them this way. He thinks Sherlock would understand; he knows how similar they are. They are both singularities, unencumbered by worldly problems. Jim likes the paradox of Sherlock ending up in prison for contempt, and decides that his final game is really the best way.

After kidnapping the children and tormenting them in dark rooms with a Sherlock Holmes mask he gives them the candy and leaves. He can't allow Sherlock to see him yet, as Jim is busy making friends with reporters and other items of business. After Sherlock is suspected Jim finds it a challenge to get the taxi to the right place in time, but it's worth to again watch Sherlock's facial expression. He no doubt was still puzzling over the complicated hand signals and IOUs Jim had been leaving, suspecting a new game but not yet realising that the game was not what he expected.

It ends, as in all proper detective stories, with them on the roof. Jim feels free so high above the pavement, and even more so when he knows he is about to beat Sherlock Holmes. He tells Sherlock almost everything: Richard Brooks, the fake code, how much enjoys destroying him. He tells him that he must jump, or the gunmen would fire on the only people he really cared about. He sees the panic on Holmes's face, and feels a crushing disappointment. Holmes is like everyone else after all: boring. He isn't going to beat him this time. Jim had half expected he would, and looks at him reproachfully.

Then Sherlock guesses about the call-off code.

The codeword is his father's name. Jim felt it appropriate somehow, and now Sherlock knows it exists. It is unimportant, as there is no way Sherlock can know and Jim would never tell him.

'I may be on the side of the angels, but do not think for a moment I am one of them.' Jim looks into his eyes, and wonders at the words at the expression. Sherlock _is_ him. He is what he could have been had things turned out better, if he's stuck to the morality people gave him or if his mother had broken his shell. They've been connected since childhood. Sherlock is not like everyone else, and Jim realises that he will give him the code. He will give it to him because he is what he could've been, and what he should have been , and because Jim loves him. Jim realises that he doesn't want to live in a Sherlock-less world, doesn't want the boredom of having the power to do anything. He has perfect control now, he thinks, but at the end he realises perfect control is impossible. There will always be Sherlocks. He has to give him the code.

But there is another way, and as Jim stutters out his thoughts he realises that he could still win. Still have that perfect control for a moment, without worrying about boredom. So Jim places the muzzle of gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger without hesitating. The last thought that flickers disembodied through his brain is that this was the final game after all. He doesn't have to act any more.

**Well that was exhausting. I know some bits are quite brief, and if anyone wants me to I'll do a collection of drabbles where I give certain moments in more detail, such as the Funeral of his father or his time with his aunt. But anyway, there you go!**


End file.
